e, "An
Exhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry in
Swabia," Luther sits on the fence, admonishing both parties of what he
deemed their shortcomings. He was naturally pleased with those
articles that demanded the free preaching of the Gospel and abused the
Catholic clergy, and was not indisposed to assent to many of the
economic demands. In fact, the document strikes one as distinctly more
favourable to the insurgents than to their opponents.

"We have," he wrote, "no one to thank for this mischief and sedition,
save ye princes and lords, in especial ye blind bishops and mad
priests and monks, who up to this day remain obstinate and do not
cease to rage and rave against the holy Gospel, albeit ye know that it
is righteous, and that ye may not gainsay it. Moreover, in your
worldly regiment, ye do naught otherwise than flay and extort tribute,
that ye may satisfy your pomp and vanity, till the poor, common man
cannot, and may not, bear with it longer. The sword is on your neck.
Ye think ye sit so strongly in your seats, that none may cast you from
them. Such presumption and obstinate pride will twist your necks, as
ye will see." And again: "God hath made it thus that they cannot, and
will not, longer bear with your raging. If ye do it not of your free
will, so shall ye be made to do it by way of violence and undoing."
Once more: "It is not peasants, my dear lords, who have set themselves
up against you. God Himself it is who setteth Himself against you to
chastise your evil-doing."

He counsels the princes and lords to make peace with their peasants,
observing with reference to the "Twelve Articles" that some of them
are so just and righteous that before God and the world their
worthiness is manifested, making good the words of the psalm that they
heap contempt upon the heads of the princes. Whilst he warns the
peasants against sedition and rebellion, and criticizes some of the
Articles as going beyond the justification of Holy Writ, and whilst he
makes side-hits at "the prophets of murder and the spirits of
confusion which had found their way among them," the general
impression given by the pamphlet is, as already said, one of
unmistakable friendliness to the peasants and hostility to the lords.

The manifesto may be summed up in the following terms: Both sides are,
strictly speaking, in the wrong, but the princes and lords have
provoked the "common man" by their unjust exactions and oppressions;
t